The Last Visit
by goldensnitch18
Summary: Severus goes to make amends with Lily. Quick oneshot for a competition. Post Reading DH.


**The Last Visit**  
**A/N: I wrote this tiny bit for a competition. I love Sev/Lil and this sort of floated into my brain after hours of doodling, debating, and disecting my quote-y . The door of happiness closing is obviously Severus and Lily's relationship, but the door he ignores that has been opened is that path away from the Dark Arts by some other means than Lily, like Dumbledore for example. Severus stares it in the face and still does not, or refuses to, see it there waiting for him. **  
**Given Quote/Poem: **_"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." _  
**Word Count: 1021**

He had fallen in love with her such a long time ago that it was difficult for him too imagine life without her, yet that was exactly what he was facing. It seemed, after thorough examination, that it would be a life without happiness, for today he felt as if every happy thought had been sucked from the air. It was almost as if the Dementors he had told her about so long ago were standing beside him, blocking anyone or anything that might cheer him under normal circumstances from succeeding.

Yes, he had loved her for many years, but he had disguised the love as the love of a best friend for so long that even his own mind had been fooled into forgetting the sort of love he really held for her. Unfortunately for him and his deceiving mind, his heart had not forgotten the real colors of the love locked inside. His heart made it very clear to him and his mind that his love ran much deeper than the love of a best friend when he took in the sight of a hand rested on the small of her back and lips placed on the soft skin below her ear, his foolish heart pumped the worst pain he had ever felt through his veins and he felt it seep from his chest into his toes.

The pain made it very clear that he loved her in such a way that no one would ever love her ever again, but it was too late for that. He himself had made sure of that. His memories took him back to the first time that her blood had come up between them. Six years ago he had told her that being a muggleborn made no difference, but he had known different even then at eleven. He had known that it would one day make all the difference in the world, maybe not to him, but to someone who would see her as less than them one day and cause her a pain like the one shooting through him rapidly. And then he had hurt her sister and she had run from him.

He should have known then that would become the path their friendship would take. A dispute about matters of blood, he would hurt her, and then she would leave him alone, just like she left him alone in that clearing when they had been young children. But, it took that fateful night outside of the Gryffindor tower as she stood in her dressing gown claiming that they had both chosen their paths for him to realize that this was the end of everything.

It wasn't as if he had a choice. He wasn't like her. He didn't glow with a charisma that seemed a magic of her own, or attract friends like flies, or project love to everyone and everything. He was lucky to have the friends he did have and the Dark Lord to save him from the useless track his life would have taken without him. The Dark Lord gave him something to cling to and fight for. Something to make him strong and revered among the people who had mocked him at one time. Didn't she understand that?

The worst bit of everything that had happened was he knew she loved him too, more than anyone had ever loved him, and she still did. He was sure of it. That sort of care doesn't fade over night because of a falling out. It would be ridiculous to suggest such a thing, but there was no way he could fix what he had done now. For that had been his intention this night. That was why he was standing at the end of the road four houses from hers, blocked by the shadows of a few rather overgrown bushes.

He had been prepared to offer her whatever it took to make her his again, but now it was easy to see that was not going to happen. For she was with him, the other boy, the one she had promised him was an arrogant toerag. He didn't seem to be such a toerag to her as she pressed her lips, her soft, wonderful lips, to his cheek and let a soft tinkling laugh escape them and float down the street to the overgrown bushes where he watched her as the pain continued to move through him as surely as his own blood.

As he turned his back to her and her toerag, he tried to convince himself that it was all for the best. They would never be together, they were not made of the right stuff. She was a mudblood after all. Even inside his own brain the word felt odd, possibly evil when it was used to describe her, and for a moment his step faltered and the bottom of his shoe scuffed against the rocks beneath it. He struggled to balance himself and then sank to the pavement, his head against his knees.

It was so wrong. Everything was so wrong in this pitiful excuse for a life that he had here waiting for him to hurry up and get on with living it. He knew that nothing good would come from the decisions he had made, but it seemed that there was nothing to be done about it now. The Dark Lord would not do with him just up and leaving because he loved a muggleborn. But, hadn't he been ready to set aside all that for her just a few minutes ago? Hadn't he been prepared to risk the terror of the Dark Lord's fury to see her love for him flash in her beautiful eyes once more? It didn't matter now though, she had chosen the toerag and he had no choice.

Yes.

That was right.

He had no other choice but to continue on the path he and his friends had decided on so many years ago.

He would allow the Dark Lord and his enchanting arts to try to fill the places where she was hidden deep within himself.


End file.
